Making a Pathfinder RPG Adventure: Day 5 – Target Audience

Finding My Audience

Before any production work begins, I think that it is important for me to get clear about what kind of person I am making this adventure for. That is, what kind of person do I think is most likely to click that download button and run it for their gaming group? Is it intended for younger gamers who don’t have the money to shell out for a published adventure? Is it intended to attract the attention of publishing company in the hopes of getting an offer for freelance work? Or is it maybe intended for the older crowd who may have already tried their hand at creating their own content and are curious to see what other would-be designer have cooked up? I know that it will be impossible to appeal to everyone, but finding an answer to this question will be essential to ensure that I capture the desired tone of the adventure and optimize my marketing strategy.

Design Experience

Well, I know for sure that this adventure is intended to serve primarily as a learning tool for myself and hopefully for others who might have similar ambitions. That means we are talking about people who are not already established writers or freelance designers. That’s not to say I don’t want people to actually enjoy playing it, I certainly do, but rather it is more important that it serves as a resource (or learning experiment if you will) rather than trying to portray it as a professional product that you might spend money on if you were to find it in your local hobby store.

Business Potential

I am keenly aware that since this is my first attempt at writing an adventure, the quality won’t be anywhere near the level that would be required to attract the interest of a potential client, so clearly, publishers are not my intended audience. Maybe once I build a respectable portfolio of work this might be in the cards, but certainly isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.

Income

The fact that the adventure will be free is an important consideration when targeting my audience. This will certainly appeal to many of the younger players who don’t have a steady income or who don’t want to spend what little money they have on a gamble.

Age

Truth be told, the younger crowd is more likely to download files or purchase products off of the internet that older folks. I think it’s safe to say that there won’t be too many geezers out there randomly downloading files they find on some obscure website. I would say that most ‘customers’ will be relatively young – say between the ages of 16 to 30.

Game Masters Or Players

Being an adventure module means that it must be targeted to appeal to GMs rather than the players. Unfortunately, that eliminates a very large percentage of the gaming community, but such is life.

Gender

While the percentage of female gamer has certainly increased over the years, the vast majority are still male.

Location

It’s likely that most people will be either English speaking Canadians or Americans.

So to summarize, my target audience is as follows:

This adventure module is targeted at young adult Game Masters looking for free content to use with their gaming group and who also have some interest in potentially self-publishing their own adventure or are simply curious to see fan-created content.

Geez, that’s a small audience. Good thing I’m not trying to make a living doing this.

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